Indian media: Economy is \\\'crying for reforms\\\'

Media are pondering whether official predictions that the Indian economy is set to grow at a rate of more than 5% in 2014-15 are realistic and offer advice on what has to be done to revive the country's fortunes. The forecast is part of the annual government Economic Survey, which is viewed as a roadmap for the country's federal budget to be unveiled on Thursday. The Hindu says that the report has ‘done a commendable job in delineating the contours of an economy that has been struggling for more than two years to grow at more than 5%’. The daily acknowledges that ‘a change in government has certainly brought about a sharp variation in sentiment’. But it warns that it is too early to assess what impact the new administration of PM Narendra Modi, with its promise of reform, will have on the real economy. ‘The Narendra Modi touch, or the 'Modinomics'… is missing from the Economic Survey document. The only thing new in the survey is the revelation that the fiscal situation is worse than what was being projected by the Manmohan Singh government.’ For the Business standard, the report ‘clearly does attempt to lay out a reform road map’. It adds, however, that a growth projection of between 5.4% and 5.9% is ‘rather optimistic’. The government must ‘transit from merely outlining a wish list to presenting an effective strategy’, concludes the paper. ‘The economy is crying for reforms,’ Sudip Bhattacharyya writes in The Pioneer. He advises that in order to ‘put India on the path to growth’ the government must take important steps. Among them is an overhaul of the public sector, ‘since it is afflicted by graft, inefficiency and incompetence’, and a ‘focus on small and medium enterprises’. ‘All is not lost yet,’ says the Hindustan Times. The year ‘2014-15 and the next couple of years may well define the story of Indian economy's great come-from-behind innings’, the paper predicts. ‘Quick decision-making and speedier implementation are vital to overhaul India's collapsing infrastructure,’ according to BBC